In episode two of this six-part series, the search for Holly Bobo continues, and investigators start pruning their list of potential suspects. To catch new episodes early, follow What Happened to Holly Bobo for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who was Holly Bobo and why was the community searching for her?
On the evening of April 20th, 2011, the arena at the Decatur County Fairgrounds in Parsons, Tennessee was packed. Hundreds had gathered there singing This Little Light of Mine, a scene captured by the local Jackson Sun newspaper. The fairgrounds is a large field surrounded by woods.
Typically, folks gather here for the county fair or the annual raccoon hunt that happened just a few days before Holly Bobo disappeared. But on this night, they were here for a different reason, to hold a candlelight vigil for Holly, the 20-year-old woman this community had spent the last week searching for day and night.
Outside, a storm was raging, which pushed the vigil indoors to a large event space at the fairgrounds. A lightning strike caused the power to go out, so the space was illuminated by the light of hundreds of candles held by a large crowd of volunteers, family, and friends.
Many wore bright pink shirts or pink ribbons on their jackets since it was Holly's favorite color and the color she was last seen wearing. The Jackson Sun recorded a highway patrol officer addressing the crowd.
This is day eight. Y'all are tired. We're frustrated. We ain't brought Holly home yet. We're going to bring Holly home.
Her parents, who were clearly distraught and shell-shocked, had gone before news cameras from local stations like WREG, begging for Holly's return. This is her father, Dana Bobo, and her mother, Karen Bobo, the day after she disappeared.
I would tell her I love her. I want her to call us, please, in any way she can get in touch with us whatsoever. That's it. Thank you. I just want her back. Thank you.
As the days dragged on, the thousands of volunteers and law enforcement who had poured into Tiny Parsons weren't just looking for Holly. They were searching for something, anything that could point to where she was.
On storefronts, on street signs, on mailboxes, pink ribbons and pictures of Holly Bobo are posted all over the small, tight-knit community of Parsons. Volunteers say they don't plan on stopping until she is found. It's just unbearable. I can't hardly imagine.
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Chapter 2: How did the search operation for Holly Bobo begin and who was involved?
The evidence was scant, some small pools of blood in the carport, presumably Holly's, as well as a shoe print and a still unidentified handprint on her car. They didn't have much to go on. And as Agent Dykus points out, we are talking about the middle of nowhere. These are huge stretches of hilly land full of dense trees, unmarked, sometimes dirt-carved roads.
There are no main roads anywhere near here. There isn't even a stoplight or caution light. The terrain made it difficult for searchers to keep up the pace. Even the search dogs kept getting stuck in the muddy wilderness. It was almost a perfect metaphor for the Holly Bobo case. Nothing about it would be easy or straightforward.
AT&T Mobility, this is Dave.
Dave, this is Judy. I work at the 911 Center, Decatur County, Tennessee. We have got a missing 20-year-old female that was pulled away from her home. We need a trace put on her cell phone, please.
One of the first things police did was to try and track Holly's cell phone. This was 2011. Holly's phone didn't have GPS on it. That wasn't a regular feature on phones at the time. But the police could ping it, meaning they could have her service provider send a signal to her phone, which told them which cell tower she was closest to.
They couldn't track exactly where she was, but they could tell with those cell phone pings that her phone was still within a few miles of her home. And investigators could later use that data to plot a detailed map of what they said were Holly's movements.
We can map her phone to the minute. And that's exactly what I did.
This is Agent John Walker of the U.S. Marshals Service. When I met with him in 2024, he unfurled this giant map. It was the map of Holly's movements he began working on in the early days of the investigation. And he's kept it all these years later.
Let's look at this map. Now this, this information, that is a cell dump of Holly's phone that morning. That means anything that Holly's phone registered on during that time is on this.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did investigators face during the search?
Essentially, for an hour and a half, her cell phone traveled all through Decatur County,
Agent Dyka says the map offers another clue that whoever took Holly must have known the area really well.
This is extremely, extremely rural area. You'll go through roads that have one house, then another house three miles down the road, and that's it. We're talking about roads that you can sit out and watch for eight hours, and there's not a car that goes down it.
Whoever did this knows these roads because they knew how to go from this point to this point, this point to this point, avoid this bridge, avoid every way that a police officer may come in.
Agent Dykus started drawing up a list of potential leads. Within the first day, investigators identified two dozen sex offenders in the area and went to check on them. But as police cast a wide net, they began to wonder if their suspect was even closer to home.
There were a lot of people that felt Clint was lying, felt very strongly that Clint was lying, and that Clint telling the truth would be the secret to solving this case.
Holly Bobo's brother, Clint, was the sole witness to her disappearance. Police wanted to know whether he should also be considered a suspect.
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Chapter 4: How was Holly Bobo's cell phone used to track her movements?
If you'd like to have a seat right there, that'd be excellent.
Okay. On the evening of his sister's abduction, Clint Bobo agreed to sit for a polygraph test conducted by a TBI agent named Valerie Trout.
Did they mention, did they talk to you about doing a polygraph?
Yeah.
Okay.
And you asked me what if I did one.
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Chapter 5: What did the cell phone data reveal about Holly's disappearance?
Okay. Does it offend you in any way?
Well, the main thing is that I just, like I told you, I don't want them, I mean, I'm not offended by it, I just want to make sure that everybody is, you know, is... Well, it really was looked at kind of the same way. Absolutely.
Before they strap Clint up for the polygraph test, Agent Trout spends about 90 minutes asking Clint to walk through what happened earlier that morning when his sister Holly went missing. Throughout the interview, Clint repeats what he's said all day, that he and his sister got along, that he didn't have anything to do with her disappearance, and he had no idea who did.
Anytime you need to stop and take a break, you just speak up, okay? Do you smoke?
I am today. Amen.
At the time, Clint was 25 years old. He was about 5'6", average build, brown hair. He'd been working part-time at a local nursing home while studying to get his bachelor's degree in social work at the University of Tennessee, Martin. He had no criminal record, and he'd been cooperative all day, showing authorities his phone, having his body searched, and agreeing to do the polygraph.
But Clint tells the polygraph examiner that he heard some people were talking about him and about how he hadn't intervened as Holly walked into the woods with someone who turned out not to be her boyfriend, Drew.
I heard something this morning about Clint was there and he Or he saw it and he didn't do anything about it. And stuff like that is just bothering me.
Later on, the polygraph examiner asks him about that.
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Chapter 6: Why was Clint Bobo, Holly's brother, considered a suspect and what was his account?
But I didn't right away. Just that being me, I just didn't do it right away because I wasn't convinced yet that anything. I went over to the window, the only window that leads into our garage where Holly parks her Mustang. And I could see like the silhouette sort of the corner of two people's shirts sitting there. And they were just sitting there talking.
Clint said he believed it was a man and a woman facing each other. This is the description of the male figure that he gave to investigators, about 5'10 or 11", 200 pounds, and a bit larger on top, almost as if he used to work out but stopped. Clint also described him as having dark hair long enough to cover his neck.
He says he didn't recognize the man's voice, but said it sounded gravelly, like a smoker's voice. Clint says he just kept telling himself it must have been Holly's boyfriend, Drew, taking her turkey hunting. He didn't know what his mom knew, that that man couldn't have been Drew, because that morning, Drew was turkey hunting 22 miles away.
Then Clint saw the man and Holly wearing a bright pink shirt walk into the woods.
That trail leads to an old logging road down there.
He says at some point his mom told him over the phone to go grab a gun and shoot the man. After he watched his sister walk away with the man, he says he went and grabbed his dad's .38 Colt Special and started to follow them.
And you went out and did you actually go on the trail?
No, I never did walk on the trail, not at that time. I just kind of walked up to the edge of the woods and then I heard someone coming. I heard a vehicle coming, so I walked back down the hill and around the edge of my driveway.
Clint says that's when his neighbor showed up and told him about the scream her son had heard a few minutes before. After an hour and a half long interview, the polygraph examiner straps Clint up to the machine. Time for the moment of truth.
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Chapter 7: What happened during Clint Bobo's polygraph test and what was the outcome?
Do you know for certain where your sister is now? No. This completes the test. Please remain still.
Clint passed the polygraph test.
That, coupled with the cell phone data, I realized, well, Holly was moving the whole time Clint's been here.
To Agent Dykus, that meant Clint was no longer a suspect, but TBI and other authorities kept an eye on Clint Bobo regardless. In the weeks that followed, he sat for multiple interviews with agents from TBI, the FBI, and the U.S. Marshals Service. It wasn't just Clint under the microscope.
The entire Bobo family faced years of scrutiny from investigators, but all of them, as well as Holly's boyfriend Drew, were eventually cleared by authorities of having anything to do with Holly's disappearance.
Sometimes people said this to my face, you know, if I had been that brother, I would have went out there, you know, I would have done something well, but they don't understand.
Years later in 2017, Clint Bobo recounted the experience to ABC News.
I just wish I had known more. I wish I had known that the neighbor called mom at school. I wished I had known that the neighbor heard a scream. I wished I had known that Drew was turkey hunting in Bass Springs. If I had known what was really occurring, I would have certainly reacted totally differently.
I know, I knew my children and knew them well. Clint was, he was never a suspect in my mind. That thought never entered my mind.
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Chapter 8: How did Holly Bobo's family cope with the investigation and scrutiny?
FX's Welcome to Wrexham.
All new Thursdays at 9 on FX. Stream on Hulu.
This is the next phase in my therapeutic work.
Nicole Kidman returns for the Hulu original Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2.
Breathe out.
This is safe. We take you back to a core trauma. Breathe in. Breathe out.
She is manipulating us. Breathe in. Breathe out. Why are you resisting? Is it too late to get a refund?
The all-new season of Nine Perfect Strangers is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu and Disney+. New episodes May 21st.
Hello, it's Robin Roberts here. Hey guys, it's George Stephanopoulos here. Hey everybody, it's Michael Strahan here. Wake up with Good Morning America.
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